Special Features

Warhammer Online War Journal: Launch Edition

Fargo: Okay: crafting! There are a lot of uses for crafting in an MMO game. In combat-oriented games, crafting is just another mechanic for augmenting your combat abilities -- you make weapons, potions, armor, etc. for the combat game. In other games crafting is a whole different facet of the core game -- Star Wars Galaxies, for example, had a very elaborate crafting system that including the creation of social items like clothes or houses. When the game was released, it was possible to play SWG as nothing but a crafter and a merchant.

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the crafting system for Warhammer Online. On the surface, it seems geared to augment the combat system. You make weapons or armor, or talismans to augment your gear, or potions to drink during combat.

[At this point I literally had to stop blogging because I looked over at my gaming PC and some orc chumps were attacking me from across a bridge, so I had to rush up there and put the hurt down, until they were joined by some other players, and we had a crazy back-and-forth 20-minute PvP stalemate on either side of the bridge. Back to the blogging!

But the way you acquire crafting materials is seemingly random. Every player can have only one gathering skill. Various skills (like scavenging, which allows you to get extra loot from bodies) and salvaging (which allows you to take apart ruined enemy gear) are used to collect random bits and bobs. For instance, to make a Talisman, you'll need to collect a container, a fragment, a curio, a gold essence, and a magic essence. Scavenging will get you curios, but it takes salvaging to get fragments. Following this so far? Me neither -- it's counter-intuitive. Moreover, it creates bottlenecks. I haven't even been able to create a single talisman yet, since the materials are in such short supply.

I presume the idea is to make it so crafting is impossible on your own -- you'll need to cooperate with other players to make even the most basic of items. Being part of a big guild with lots of guild vault permissions is probably the way to go. But for a casual player, it seems like a lot of work and a lot of frustration.